It appears that we have some unfinished business on one of the previous t-shirt design tutorials that we did. We are referring to the 3D t-shirt design technique that we blogged about that we feel could go two or three more steps to really polish it off. The trick that we are going to use involves transparency and allowing the different layers of colors to mix in the spots that they overlap. This makes for much more difficult screen printed t-shirts but we think it is well worth it.

Let’s begin with taking a look at the final design we created with the 3D feel:

The first thing we’re going to do is grab all of the blue stars, and simply change the transparency down to 60%.

Here is a closer look at the transparency change:

Then we are going to grab all of the pink stars and drop the transparency down to 70%. Going any lighter will take away the pop of the paint that we need for this technique.

A closer look at the transparency:

And that does it! I know, simple enough to really add the third dimension to the illustration. Here’s a final look at an old design with a new trick: